Bark Like A Fish, Damnit!

52 Photos: Week 4

January 24th, 2014

Kevin was out of town this week, so I started about eleven hundred projects in order to keep from going bonkers. (I am hella productive when I'm solo. I think it's because I get restless and wander around and start drawing when I'd normally just poke Kevin a few times and laugh maniacally. This is useful for my self-worth but bad for my mood.)

Despite these projects, I only took a couple photos and I didn't do any of the "sit down and stage this and fiddle with lighting" stuff that I wanted to do. (But I did write over 8000 words, so that's not a bad thing!)

This is my absolutely straightforward not-bothering-to-compose workspace photo. Were I doing this more staged, I'd move those pens touching the painting, and maybe see if I couldn't darken the background bits more. (I am enjoying the pink bunny painting, though!)

Obligatory Cat Photo. This is Sergei, who is actually extremely lean but was caught in an angle of fluffiness. Taken and filtered with Camera+

I think part of my problem is that I need...I don't know, narrative. There has to be a figure. I'm bad at still-lifes, I want some little tiny moment of the hero's journey, even if the hero is a vaguely anthropomorphic vegetable. I have a sort of idea I'm working on that may put that to rest, but at the moment...cat photos.

Hmmm; you could narrate what the components of your photos are saying. The pink bunny could be looking at the blue wolf and saying "Dude, do you know you've got a pin in you blindfold? I mean, right over your freakin' eyeball?" Or Sergei could be explaining how to make Distilled Catnip Vodka in a lazy, gruff drawl.

Sergei, btw, looks very much like my first cat, Smokey, also a Russian Blue; really, I was his girl much more than he was my cat. He slept in the dollbed at the foot of my own, took walks with me and my mom, and I would have conversations with him in our back yard (well, *I* remember talking to him and getting responses, but then I was only 3 or 4. Still, that's what I recall. He had a deep, soft voice like fur made audible.)

I share something with the Great Ysabet! Glee!

Me too! My cat, Izzy, prefers traditional meowing, but I used to have a cat, Gus, who bonded with me the minute I rescued him from a parking lot. I picked him up, he nuzzled my face and I walked into the ranger building (county park was where I found him) and asked if there was any milk in the break room the staffer would be willing to share, because he was HUNGRY.

I was 17. My mother pinched her lips together, grabbed my arm and marched me to the car, completely embarrassed and furious with me. I protested the entire time, as I knew I was RIGHT. He had told me so!

It is entirely possible to have narrative in still life--especially in 'found' still life. The thing of it is, you may not understand the story. One of my favorite shots (found still life), is of a 1970-ish Coke dispenser (like you'd find in a diner), that was just sitting on the sidewalk outside of a cemetery. I shot it low and wide, so that you could see through the wrought iron fence to the rows of tombstones. I call it "The Pause That Refreshes", and I've absolutely NO IDEA of why the machine was there.

I heart the bunny. It is an excellent bunny. What I love, and what my roommate loves, is that it has a needle. It's not just a bright pink bunny with an attitude. It is a bright pink bunny with an attitude that made itself. It started out as just an attitude.

So yeah, print should happen unless the original is too inexpensive for me to feel unguilty about buying.

The bunny makes me think of the Velveteen Rabbit. Clearly this bunny is a bunny golem who has sewed bits of Real Rabbit into himself; within the stuffing there beats a disconnected heart, and as for the brain behind those eyes... don't fuck with that brain, is all I can say.

That thing-- the little one behind the gesso-or-whatever bottles, which also appeared on tumblr-- what is it? Are there more of them? If I want one, am I going to have to butcher a calico corners creature myself?

(ahem. Nice photos. I think one ought to be able to tell stories with a still life from accessories & how they're placed without including the players.)

I work in an art store.I recognize nearly all your tools (except a few I suspect have a different package here is France)I want to go back to work, haul a case or two of tools and throw it at your feet.

Digger comic issue

I'm not sure if this is the correct place to put this, but the comic itself has no links for this sort of thing. I was linking a friend over to the Digger comic. Everything after the first page comes out as a 502 Bad Gaterway | nginx/1.4.1 (Ubuntu) error.

I want to share the comic as an example of really good culture development, but no one can read it now.